Juozas Jankauskas-Berzelis
Juozas Jankauskas, who spent most of his life wearing the Demon nickname. A pupil of Sakiai “Ziburys” gymnasium. Eighteen-year-old soldier of General Povilas Plechavičcus' Local Team. Nineteen-year-old Lithuanian guerrilla, partisan who received the first baptism of battle in the famous Battle of Valkai. Commander of the Taur District Zalgiris national team and later the whole district. He was one of the organizers of the legendary Lithuanian guerrilla commander Alodf Ramanauskas-Vanags march to Samogitia, where the famous declaration of February 16, 1949 was signed and was awarded the 3rd degree of the Freedom Fighting Cross. Later, he fell into the Satanic trap of the MGB and became a part of it himself. The hands of several ex-combatants have been soiled. And finally, as a reward for his zealous service to the occupier, he received a bullet in the head at Moscow's Butyrk Prison. This would pave the way for a traitorous freedom fighter in a few sentences. The case of J. Jankauskas-Demon is not exceptional. Betrayal was a common phenomenon in postwar freedom struggles. With the weakening of armed resistance, more and more guerrillas, whether regular fighters or national or even district commanders, were moving to the enemy side. Infiltrating the numerous army of MGB agents-strikers, they played a decisive role in destroying the entire armed resistance movement. But about all this - a little later. In the meantime, let's see what made Taurus County Commander Juozas Jankauskas-Demon turn the treachery mistake. A potholed guerrilla road After the second occupation of Lithuania by the Soviets, in March 1945, a former soldier of P. Plechavicius' local team joined the partisan squad led by Andrew Shmuil. The first serious baptism was waiting for the young fighter a couple of months later. On May 12, about 250 NKVD frontier troops surrounded the Valka Forest near Sutkai village, which housed a partisan camp and bunkers led by Captain George Waltz-Tundra. The camp had about 60 guerrillas at the time. 78 enemy soldiers were killed and 19 guerrillas were killed in the battle. In February 1947, the Demon was appointed commander of the Second Platoon of the 37th Company of the Grunwald, and later, the Chief of the Intelligence Division. Unfortunately, he does not last long in these positions. What struck the fighter's leg can be seen from the Taur County commander's order of August 5, 1949. It reads: "Demon Chief of the Grunwald Selection Intelligence Division for deliberately underestimating and not contributing to the efforts of the LLKS Council in the fight against alcohol abuse, excessive drinking, causing outrage to commit to non-alcohol use, and dismissing others because in the future I will punish all with severity. " Still, the Demon is left with the opportunity to rehabilitate in the eyes of the leadership and the militants. On September 1, 1949, he was appointed temporarily to the position of the Chief of Economy Division of the Grunwald HQ. In the winter of the same year, he was given a responsible mission - to accompany District Commander Faust and Commander of the South Lithuanian Partisans Alodfa Ramanauskas Vanags to the Lithuanian Partisan Commanders' Meeting in Radviliškis District Mėnaičiai village, where , which legitimized the Council of LUAS as the only legitimate power in the territory of occupied Lithuania. In October 1950, the Demon was awarded the 3rd Degree of Freedom Fighting Cross for this march. This award was given to the Demon already during his duties as Commander of the Grunwald Team. A guerrilla was assigned to them, after the death of former commander Felix Zhindi-Tiger. At the time, he seems to have regained the confidence of the national team fighters. This is evidenced by the results of the secret ballot recorded in the minutes of the team leaders' meeting on September 29, 1950: "The meeting, after considering each candidate's suit, by secret ballot asks the District Commander to approve the Demon with the 6: 2 secret ballot." Moore did his own thing But soon the new district commander was behaving strangely. His inexplicable behavior became especially evident after the second group of paratroopers from Germany, the journalist Julijonas Butėnas and Jonas Kukauskas, who landed in Kazlų Rūda forests in April 1951. When Deputy Demon Petras Jurkšaitis-Biržas paratrooped the paratroopers in the Rūdšilis hiding place near Linmark for leadership meetings, the Demon wanted to meet them in person and, with the help of the early-Lithuanian radist Clemens Shirvis-Sakal, arrived in Linmark. Five men discussed the current situation in the hideout, but Mr Butėnas could not say anything about the prospects of a partisan struggle. "So what did you come here for?" Birch nodded and exited the hideout. Meanwhile, the Demon stayed with strangers from behind the Iron Curtain. It's hard to say what the commander of the two paratroopers has heard yet, but one can guess the conversation was disappointing. Perhaps the commander realized that serious help from the West was not worth the effort. It is very likely that this meeting knocked out the Demon and again encouraged her to resort to the usual "sedatives." In the memoirs of J. Kukauskas, published 11 years ago in the Freedom Fighting Archive, the words of a former paratrooper can be found: “One evening, after leaving the bunker for a walk, the district commander Demon disappeared. Unarmed, barefoot and gone. Our searches ended with no results. We waited anxiously until breakfast, he didn't show up. We were about to leave the bunker, look for a place elsewhere, but in the evening the Demon appeared. He said that as he walked out of the bunker, he noticed a man slipping about the bunker. To put his feet down, he got out of here and went to Birch's liaison, where he spent the day. I don't know like others, but I didn't find his removal very convincing. He himself was very angry, he was uncomfortable with us. ” Where was the barefoot and unarmed Taur County commander around the clock and why did he lie to his fighting friends? And that he was lying - obviously, because many years later, Ona Jonaitytė-Ramunė, a Biržai liaison, when asked about J. Jankauskas' stay, replied: "It would have been a great honor for me to have been visited by Tauras County Commander in my home." The choice of versions is small: either the self-deprecating Demon has no idea where he is drunk, or he was already somehow associated with the MGB. Some associate the mysterious disappearance of the district commander with the May 21, 1951, drama. On May 20, an overrated communicator pointed to a guerrilla hiding place in the village of Altoniškės. In it, the security agents managed to grab the partisan Peter Vengraitis-Žilvitis. A report from the security guards about this operation reads: “Petras Vengraitis-Žilvitis, taken alive, showed eight bunkers (…) over the next four days. First on May 21st. 11am 40 min was surrounded by a Birch bunker in the Rudschill Forest. At Žilviitis' command, two battalions, commanded by Lieutenant Tarnowski, surrounded him with a ring. Immediately, the bunker opening opened and one of the guerrillas popped open fire on the soldiers. Birch was killed three meters from the bunker by the response of Lieutenants Tarnovsky and Audey machine guns. The second one tried to jump out, but was shot down by Cherniakov and fell back into the bunker. It was the journalist - parachuteist Julijonas Butėnas. ” As the events unfold, we'll add that Žilvitis later became an MGB agent-striker and eventually got the same fate as his commander Demon. 1952 On February 21, he was sentenced to death and shot four months later.On June 7, 1952, the commander himself was killed by an attempt to send letters to the West, written by the radioist K. Sirvys-Sakalas, who returned to Lithuania with the first group of paratroopers. The Demon decided to transport the letters to Kybartai, where his fiancé Elena lived. But showing up on campus was risky. So the demon dropped his bike to Batrušiai village near Elena's motherland, where she found her fiancé's brother. Asking a future bride to go to Kybartai and summon Elena, the guerrilla commander never thought he was talking to an MGB agent in Sheshup. It is understood that he was accompanied by armed security guards instead of his fiancé. The dilemmas of staying true to the guerrilla oath and dying or choosing to betray the demon seemed to have no solution. Well-dressed in Georgian cognac, he agreed to become an agent-smog and received the nickname of Berel. From that time until late autumn, Berželis and the security guards roamed the Kazlų Rūda forests, giving the security guards a meeting place for partisan supporters and liaison officers. The number of former combatant and partisan liaison officers killed by the new MGB agent is not known, but reports from security guards show that on November 3, 1952 he was actively involved in the arrest of Darius and Girenas homeland leader Povilas Peciulaitis-Nightingale and the killing of freedom fighters Kazys Ruseck-Doller and Leon. Lukoševičius-Vytautas. But zealous service to the enemy did not save the Demon. After doing his job, Agent Berzelis became obsolete. On March 14, 1953, Jankauskas was arrested, and on July 27, 1954, he was sentenced to shooting without the right to lodge a cassation appeal. The sentence was executed on January 26, 1955 in Moscow's Butyrk Prison.An unbeatable game Hardly did Jankauskas-Demon realize that, after breaking his oath, he became just a tiny screw in a satanic Soviet security game that has no rules and cannot be won. The men who had stayed in the woods and had fought until the last breath had hardly realized what a clever, experienced and cunning opponent they would have to face. Destroying the underground with the very hands of freedom fighters, wrapping up a confusing knot of treachery and betrayal, was the main tactic of the Soviet occupiers, successfully tried so far in Ukraine. In 1946, all the heads of the operational sectors of the Soviet NKVD from Moscow came under instruction to follow the "effective methods of fighting the nationalist underground" applied in Ukraine. Along with this instruction, Major Aleksei Sokolov, a former commander of the local smugglers, is coming from Ukraine. Within a short period of time, the Major collected about 90 strikes, most of them thieves and assassins. It was these characters who were willing to go to groups of so-called "folk defenders" - the tribesmen. He also did not avoid the sublime hands, who were soiled with Jewish blood during the Nazi occupation, although such persons had to be tried under Soviet law. The first known murder of A. Sokolov was carried out on September 22, 1946 in a farmstead in Grendavė village, Onuškis district, Trakai county. After summoning three to four guerrillas, the strikers introduced themselves as partisans of the Ukmergė region who had withdrawn from the NKVD rampage. To make it more convincing, security agents showed the men the command of Greater Fighting District Commander John Misiun-Greenwell. (The Green Devil himself was arrested at the time). The guerrillas fired coldly at the documented guerrillas, and the entire family of the homesteaders, Blaževičius, was killed by witnesses. Soon killing civilians will become common practice among agents, the strikers. Not only did Sokolov's smugglers destroy all witnesses of his crimes (mostly homesteaders, where meetings with partisans took place), but also people who were completely unrelated to freedom fighters. Imposing Lithuanian guerrillas, they invaded the homesteads, fired upon the people who lived there, robbed their property, and sometimes even burned the hut. The purpose of such actions was to compromise the entire armed underground, to provoke people's distrust of freedom fighters and to stop them being supported by the villagers. The effectiveness of such campaigns can be inferred from the fact that myths about the "forest" that killed and plundered innocent people are still alive today. However, A. Sokolov was not satisfied with the "work" of his students. According to the Major himself, of the 18 tribes he directly supervised, 12 were thieves and stole everything. Thus, the Major planned to establish a central group of violinists, which he intended to include the partisan traitors. "I will work better with bandits than with clubbing," the commander said. Recruited guerrillas did much better for this black job. After all, if they didn't know best the habits, behaviors, songs of real guerrillas ... They also knew both former combatants and neighborhood residents. It was difficult to distrust such people. Werewolves in Fighting Fur Coats Thus, since 1947, almost exclusively guerrillas have been recruited into the squad. The recruitment was in two stages. First, the fighter who gets into the hands of the MGB is forced or persuaded to list all his communications and the guerrilla bunkers he knows. A variety of methods have been used for "persuasion," from brutal torture and blackmail to promises, propaganda about "Soviet paradise" and alcohol. Occasionally, recruits were shown falsified orders by guerrilla staff, which had allegedly already been convicted as a traitor. In other cases, the detainee was dressed in a Chekist uniform and photographed by a guerrilla who was killed at the time of his arrest, and was then threatened with seeing his photograph in the woods. Thinking he had only two ways to go, either to perish in the basement of the MGB or to be wound up by a frequent recruiter, he agreed to cooperate with the enemy. Then what started to be what the security guards called "operational use". At this stage, the agent does not yet have a weapon, and the task of killing guerrillas issued is carried out by the Chekists accompanying him. Later, the right candidates would themselves become agents of the smugglers and kill the fellow combatants they met. It is understood that an armed agent recruited against his will posed a threat to the security guards accompanying him. As a result, the strikers were initially guided through the forest with wire straps. One end was tied to the elbow of the agent's right hand, and the other was tucked through the trouser pocket and attached to the leg. A man surrounded in this way is free to shoot, but he has no chance of escape. Far more powerful than any wire traitors were the blood of the murdered former comrades. After the first "bloody" operation, there was no way back, and the striker's life (usually temporarily) was guaranteed only by zealous service to the enemy. Eventually, Sokolov, the commander of strikes, began recruiting even more sophisticated and sophisticated agents. One of them was the so-called "spinner". The scheme of this operation is as follows. The security guards grab the partisan or their liaison. As the detainee is transported through the forest, a convoy of guerrilla agents strikers.The "liberated" fighter is taken to a specially equipped bunker. Here the "guerrillas" arrest and accuse him of treason and threaten to shoot him there. It is understood that the detainee claims to have given nothing. The "guerrillas" then demand proof of their innocence - to write down their merits and to indicate their relationship with those who can testify. After a while, other "guerrillas" appear in the bunker, again "releasing" the detainee. Meanwhile, a piece of paper with his testimony travels straight to the MGB and lies in dozens of new files.Another widespread MGB trick was photo falsification. Many have probably seen a photo of J. Lukša-Skirmantas standing next to the partisan paratroopers K. Širvys-Sakalas and Benedictas Trumpa-Rytis, who have returned from the West. In this photo, the MGB specialists mounted the faces of two agents' strikers instead of the true faces of paratroopers. This photo, which was deliberately distributed throughout Lithuania, had to prove that Luksha's companions were truly the ring. Such tricks were especially useful to security guards as the MGB's strategy to fight resistance began to change. Now the security guards sought to physically exterminate individual guerrilla commanders or fighters as much as to seize the entire armed underground command with the help of agents and thus destroy it internally. After the MGB, unknowingly, Bronius Kalytis-Horror and Mykolas Urbonas-Liepa, commanders of the North-East Lithuania region, fell into the hands of the MGB, a directive with the following content came from Moscow: December. to secretly arrest the leaders of the Northeast Lithuanian region to legend the "center" of the nationalist underground. (…) From the legendary "center" through the banditry channels available, to reconnect with the leaders of the presidium of the so-called Lithuanian Freedom Movement, J. Zemaitis, A. Ramanauskas and J. Kimstas, to arrest them and take the underground leadership into their hands. The fate of traitors In 1952, the Lithuanian SSR MGB unit was instructed to “practice extensively conspiratorial detention with a view to their subsequent use in combinations of banditry command and detention. From detained bandit leaders to recruit agents who, with their personal qualities and connections, can enter the leadership of the nationalist underground. ” This method has proven to be very effective. Piotr Kondakov, Minister of the Interior of the LSSR, signed in Moscow on April 18, 1953, writes to his boss, Lavrentij Beria, in Moscow: “Thanks to their legendary bandit formation, these tools allowed our agency to seize the most serious organizational units; structure and paralyze the active terrorist activities of bandits. " It is no coincidence that 1953 marks the beginning of the end of the Lithuanian guerrilla movement. The Kondakov report, cited above, said that agents infiltrating the armed underground alone had arrested and killed 60 guerrillas earlier this year, and had contacted and prepared to kill 70 other militants. On the other hand, historian Mindaugas Pocius, who has studied the activities of special groups of the MGB, points out that by April 1953 the Chekists had 72 guerrillas alive. Of these, only 18 recruited smugglers, 23 used them for operational purposes and the other 31 arrested them. Thus, almost half of the arrested freedom fighters failed to break the MGB. And what was the destiny of the broken? Many of them, like J. Jankauskas-Demon, who were no longer needed, were arrested, convicted and shot again. Others, like Povilas Puodžiūnas-Žeruolis, Chief of Staff of the Great Fighting District, who had lost 17 combatants, raised his hand against himself, fearing the same fate. They were both mad and hopelessly drunk and ended their lives in strange circumstances. This, for example, happened to the famous poet Kost Kubilinskas. For the sake of his career, offering his services to the Chekists and personally shooting the sleepy Dainava District Commander, Benedict Laben-Cady, betraying all staff members and then publicly speaking about black conscience, the former striker in 1962 mysteriously died in the Pamaskwe Holiday House. Few of the traitors have reached the age of profound old age, and even fewer have received earthly justice.There are, of course, many reasons why so many partisans moved to the enemy side after 1950. Disappointment in the West, even before the war with the Soviet Union. Mass deportations, which have deprived freedom fighters of more supporters. Finally, the fact that many of the most courageous, ideological, unbroken guerrilla commanders were dead at that time. But explaining is not the same as justifying. Betrayal will always remain a betrayal that will inevitably leave deep and long-lasting wounds. Not only did their post-war agents kill the strugglers, they killed their faith in the very meaning and justice of the struggle for freedom. The seed of fear, mistrust, and hatred they sow continues to bear its bitter fruit today. Category:Male Category:Traitor Category:Modern Villains Category:Cold war villains Category:Soviet Villains Category:European Villains Category:Deceased Category:Execution